Annual General Meeting

Thursday, October 27, 2011

12 -2 p.m.

OISE Room 5-280

The local will be discussing the state of bargaining with the Employer and some things that we intend to do to advance our bargaining goals. The election of the members of the executive committee and the trustees will take place at this meeting.

It will also be presenting the annual report of the local as well as the budget. This meeting will provide us with the opportunity to discuss the direction of the local and the priorities that you would like to establish. Our local is as strong as the degree to which you and other members participate in its activities.

The members of CUPE Local 3907 at the University of Toronto stand in solidarity with the members of McGill University Non-Academic Certified Association (MUNACA) and their strike action. Your strike to achieve internal and external equity with other similarly-placed workers in your workplace as well as with employees in other postsecondary educational institutions in Montreal is both inspiring and encouraging to our local.

In going out on strike, MUNACA is valiantly attempting to bring the Employer’s behavior in line with its expressed principles. In the terms of reference of the Principal’s Task Force on Diversity, Excellence and Community Engagement, the Employer asserts, “We will evaluate our achievement regularly and rigorously, both against our own previous performance and against that of our peers.” The practice of evaluating its operation against that of other comparator organizations is a long established way of ensuring that McGill University meets or exceeds the best practices in the university sector.

Therefore, the Employer should not treat your demands for a wage scale, substantive involvement in decisions about your members’ pension plan and workplace benefits, which are already enjoyed by workers in comparable organizations, as unreasonable and unprecedented. Internal and external equity has long been used in industrial relations to determine the terms and conditions of employment for workers and even administrators in higher education institutions.

The Principal’s Task Force highlights diversity of staff or employment equity as a major concern. If the Employer has concerns about seniority considerations frustrating the need to remove structural racist and other discriminatory barriers in fairly representing equity-seekers throughout the job classifications system, it should see MUNACA as partner and not a liability to this necessary goal. Any union that is committed to the principle of an “Injury to one is an injury to all” is going to work to ensure that equity-seekers are fairly and rapidly represented in all job categories.

CUPE Local 3907 applauds the determination of your members in standing up for fairness and equity in the workplace. Please rest assured that our members are solidly behind your strike action. A cheque is attached to this letter and it represents a donation from CUPE Local 3907 to MUNACA’s strike fund.

http://www.thecaribbeancamera.com/news/5290-js-1

The local chapter of an organisation that represents Africans around the world wants to see a better and more comprehensive employment equity legislation in Ontario.

The Network for Pan-Afrikan Solidarity (Toronto) is calling on the three major political parties to support a comprehensive employment equity legislation so as to create a level employment playing field for racialized workers.

It says racialized workers are not experiencing the glass ceiling. “We are faced with the concrete ceiling or steel door.”

The organization says there are no anti-racist planks in the individual electoral platform of Ontario’s three major political parties and it wants to communicate its strong objection to what it describes as “the race-baiting of Tim Hudak on the question of racist employment barriers” and initiatives to address this matter.

“Our organization has been following the responses to Progressive Conservative party leader Tim Hudak’s comment about “foreign workers” being given privileged access to job opportunities. Was he implicitly appealing to white voters who have Ontario or Canada as their place of birth? The various criticisms of Hudak’s statement have largely failed in addressing the real issue about race and access to jobs in the province.”

The organization says instead of calling for an apology or a retraction of the racially offensive statement from Hudak, critics ought to be calling for the inclusion of a comprehensive employment equity legislation plank in the respective platforms of the three major parties. “Racialized workers are confronted by discriminatory employment barriers in the workplaces across the province of Ontario and the rest of Canada. In the absence of employment equity legislation with targets and enforceable accountability measures, it will be decades before these workers are fairly represented across the job classifications system in the private, public and not-for-profit sectors in Ontario. “

The organization added that the federal government with an employment equity legislation covering the national civil service has failed in equitably hiring and promoting racialized workers.

“In 2010, racialized workers had a national workforce availability (WFA) figure of 12.4 per cent, but only 9.8 per cent of them were employees of the national government. It was very instructive that of the four employment equity designated groups (women, racialized workers, people with disabilities and Aboriginals),racialized workers were the only underrepresented group. The other groups were overrepresented as federal employees based on their respective WFA figures,” the Network of Pan Afrikan Solidarity said.